/m/oakland

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As I interpret this, he is saying that Moneyball's central thesis is that smart people understand baseball and can use that understanding. He then says that the A's refute that theory because none of the sportswriters making predictions saw them as being good this year. I guess he never considered the possibility that the people making predictions are not very smart.

Removed from a narrative that suggests that the obscure and unloved likes of Chad Bradford—and by proxy, Beane’s shrewd evaluations—were responsible for the old A’s success, it amounts to this: You should value things that are worth more than they cost. As morals go, this is one of Lewis’ better ones.

Yeah, the 2012 A's are really the antithesis of both that narrative and moral. And did he really link approvingly to Paul Lebowitz to make that argument?

If his underlying point is that they overperformed mediocre projections, sure. But they fit the Moneyball narrative better than the 2002 squad did.

This team is, in essence, a refutation of Moneyball’s central thesis: the idea that the world makes sense and that someone who’s smart or at least attentive can figure it out

He read a different book than I did. The book I read said that baseball is fundamentally unpredictable, and that while careful attention to statistics can increase your chance of success in the long run, which tends pretty strongly to increase the FREQUENCY of success in the long run, there are no guarantees.

It does sound like he read a different book, but that's because the excerpt is incomprehensible without the beginning of the article. Basically he takes the naysayer interpretation of why those A's teams were so good (they succeeded not because of quirky players or smart analysis but because they were full of great young stars, stars who weren't going to catch the eye of the author) and then redefines Moneyball in that way. So when he says that today's team is anti-Moneyball, he really means that they're anti-his-interpretation-of-Moneyball, which is to say that they are arguably a Moneyball team if you use the traditional interpretation.

The other point is that he thinks that Beane, who previously thought that he had cracked the code of player acquisition, has seen the error of his ways and has now embraced uncertainty and randomness, which is why he stockpiles prospects.

Wait, so picking up a bunch of players off the scrap-heap and combining them with a bunch of good young pitchers is NOT "Moneyball"?
Huh.

Don't know if anybody else noticed this, but their offense turned out to be surprisingly "Moneyball Classic": comfortably above-average homers and walks, despite no players really outstanding in either area besides Reddick. Pretty darn good base-stealing numbers, too - five guys who can GO, and a few others who are more element-of-surprise.

When the A's win, Beane is a genius. When they lose, baseball is an unpredictable game and they were unlucky in playing and unfair game.

This is unnecessarily mean-spirited. The playoffs ARE a crapshoot. And whatever happens in the playoffs, this team came out of NOWHERE to finish with a division title, and the second-best record in the AL. They're darn good, although probably not THIS good; I've been saying that all season (though Amazing GF disagrees vehemently.) However, they (and Beane) have been plenty lucky - lighting-in-a-bottle lucky. And I'd always rather be lucky than good.

Yes, and the Beane A's have never actually been lucky before, unless you count the luck involved when a prospect pans out instead of flopping. But their fair share of prospects have flopped, too, especially in the past few years.